“We don’t use our body to get into a pose, we use the pose to get into our body.” -Bernie Clark

Winter Yoga Session — 10 Class Series

January 12, 2025 - March 16, 2024

9-10:30am in Christopher Hall

Pre-registration required

Class size limited to 10 people

$200 via Venmo @katewardyoga to hold your spot

Ten weeks of classes focusing on cues that cultivate steadiness, stability, and focus for a sublime experience in Uttitha Parsvakonasana. We will work with cue sets to stabilize the pelvis, hips, and knees, to expand the chest and strengthen the upper back, to soothe the kidneys, lungs, and heart, to calm our nervous systems, and to smooth out the breath.

Join a wonderful group of practitioners! Laugh, play, and restore yourself!

Important Details

Please arrive to the Hall with plenty of time to gather props prior to the beginning of class.

Class size is limited to 10 people during the term. Drop-in classes are $24. If you would like to drop-in for class, please pre-register to ensure a spot is available.

Note that the hall may be quite chilly November—February and warm layers are recommended. Please bring your own mat. All other props are provided.

What Style of Yoga is this?

Intermediate classes focus on training the awareness to abide in the body, building pathways of neuromuscular connection. In doing so, we are able to reduce patterns of chronic tension and increase freedom of movement. We strive to ease tension in the body by working subtly and gently to strengthen weakened areas while learning to relax the vise-like grip of areas that are tightly clenched. This work can be quite calming for the nervous system. Practicing new ways of relating to our own bodies creates opportunities for new ways of relating with others and with our day-to-day lives.

Classes typically begin with a brief introduction to the anatomy we will attend to that day. Thoughtfully designed sequences include standing poses, balancing poses, twists, seated poses, restorative shapes, and supported pranayama, as time allows.

Props are used for most poses to safely support the body’s unfolding, and to allow us to go deeper into certain aspects of the poses. Detailed cues are given to guide the practice.

Prerequisites

For the intermediate level yoga practice, students should already be familiar with the most common poses and have a basic understanding of healthy alignment.

We use props to accommodate a variety of bodies and to make the shapes more challenging, or less so, to meet individual needs.

It is recommended that practitioners have one year of some type of consistent mindfulness-based practice prior to signing up for class, so that there is already a level of comfort with maintaining inwardly focused attention for 90 minutes.

What to Expect

• We will move with awareness and intention, knowing that handstands won’t make us better people, but sticking with ourselves by accepting both the abilities and the limitations of our bodies on any given day, while celebrating ourselves for showing up on the mat, absolutely will!

• We will practice being patient and kind with ourselves by genuinely listening to invitations to go deeper, as well as requests to back off.

• We will unfold into deeper expressions of the poses over time, according to the felt wisdom of our bodies, rather than pushing and pulling ourselves into idealized shapes that make us vulnerable to injury.

• We will have multiple options for most shapes to accommodate a variety of expressions and to honor the individual needs of our bodies on any given day.

Kate’s Training

In 2006, I was trained in meditation practice, and immediately took it up as a daily commitment. Despite consistent practice, it took several years to cultivate the ability to place my awareness in my own body and sustain it there for long periods of time.

In the beginning, I could barely tolerate the practice of meditation. I was bombarded with so much discomfort in the mind and in the body that I could hardly hold my seat.

When I started practicing yoga, a short time later, I often felt so overwhelmed by big emotions and difficult memories that it took tremendous will power to make it through the practice without sobbing or bolting out the door mid-class. Physically speaking, I was in a stiff, clenched, tense, restricted body. Mentally speaking, rights and lefts continually confused me, inversions disoriented me, and I often had difficulty following the teacher’s instructions, even when they worked with me one on one. At every level, these practices showed me my short-comings again and again.

Despite the discomfort and the vulnerability, I stuck with it. For years, day after day, I would get on the mat, and it wouldn’t go that well. I just kept trying, and eventually, little by little, things began to shift, and in time, everything changed.

The major turning point came in January of 2017, when I started studying yoga with Todd Jackson. His emphasis on inner body integration over idealized shapes changed everything for me. In his class, we utilize a meditative awareness to come deeply into the body, and truly feel the shapes unfold from the inside out.

Todd Jackson graduated from the Advanced Studies Program at The Yoga Room in Berkley, and has been teaching yoga since 1997. After multiple decades of learning, teaching, and deep personal practice, Todd presents original content in the field of yoga.

What I teach comes directly from what Todd has taught to me. I am forever grateful for his teaching and for his patient guidance. If there is anything of value that I pass on through teaching yoga, all the credit belongs to him.

As for formal training, at the end of 2017, I completed a 200-hour Yoga Alliance certified teacher training program along with a supplementary restorative teacher training program in Portland, Oregon. I taught for three years in Portland, and I have been teaching classes on Maui since August of 2023.

Cancellation Policy

Committing to a 10-week workshop means showing up for yourself and for your classmates even when you don’t feel like it. We know from experience that it’s the times we resist showing up, that we need the practice, and the community, the most. Our disciplined commitment to our practice and to our classmates, creates a container of support that holds us up when we need it the most.

Our curriculum content builds on itself throughout the term. New content will be given in each class to meet our growing ability to embody the cues. During each class, we will review previous content and have space for questions.

Your tuition holds your spot in the workshop. Refunds are not available for missed classes. If you need to miss a class or to leave the term early, it’s okay to have a friend or a family member show up to class and take your place on the mat on any given week!

Gratitude

Teaching yoga in this way allows me to give to others the tremendous gift of practice that has been given to me. It is my way of honoring the long lineage of practitioners that have kept yoga alive and continually evolving for thousands of years. It fulfills me to share this experience and I couldn’t do it without dedicated students like you. Thank you!